Subnational ties forge lasting bonds

Jeffrey Sullivan, director of systemwide athletics for Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, has not taken off a bracelet since February. A Chinese student from a visiting delegation knotted and tied it around his wrist and told him that it would bring luck for the entire year. Sullivan has no intention of removing it.

Across the country in Utah, a young woman named Ellie Phelps once sat in a Chinese-language class and was ready to quit for lack of a personal connection to the language. One summer camp in China changed everything. Today, Phelps is on a Fulbright Scholarship at Tianjin University. This year, she will return to the summer camp as a mentor.

At a park in Liuzhou, South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, couples take their wedding photos on the replica of a bridge located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In Tacoma, Washington, more than 200 students from Lincoln High School and its sister school in Fuzhou, East China's Fujian province, have taken part in mutual exchanges since 2008. Among them was a young woman whose single trip sparked a lifelong love of immersing herself in other cultures.

In Oregon, a state senator came home from a trade mission to 13 Chinese cities to find that more than 80,000 additional tons of Oregon hay will head to China.

At a moment when China-US tensions dominate the headlines, an expanding network of subnational partnerships, spanning states including Oregon, Maryland, Ohio, Utah, California and Washington, is quietly growing stronger.

In the 47 years since Nanjing and St. Louis forged the first China-US sister city bond in 1979, the two countries have built 238 such pairings and 50 sister province-state relationships.

Built to last

In Tacoma's Chinese Reconciliation Park, an ornate pavilion, the Fuzhou Ting, was donated by the city of Fuzhou.

"We're so proud and grateful for the relationship with our beautiful sister city of Fuzhou," said Tacoma Council Member Jamika Scott. "It's been a privilege to nurture this relationship for more than 30 years, and we continue to learn and grow from our ties."

The ting, a traditional Chinese structure built to provide shelter, rest and viewing points, has since been the site of dragon boat races, welcomed musicians from the Sister Cities International Music Festival, and served as a stage for film screenings and cultural celebrations, said Scott.

In Liuzhou, a different kind of monument has taken on an unexpected role. A replica of the Roebling Suspension Bridge that spans the Ohio River was built in collaboration between Liuzhou and Cincinnati.

Couples in Liuzhou now stand on the bridge for their wedding pictures.

Despite the city's German heritage, Cincinnati formed its first subnational relationship with a Chinese city. Established nearly four decades ago, the sister-city partnership with Liuzhou has touched thousands of lives through teaching and professional exchanges, said Janet Huston, Ohio state representative for Sister Cities International.

More recently, pickleball enthusiast Joe Hamrick, who is also the chair of the Cincinnati-Liuzhou Sister City Committee, recruited seven couples to travel to Liuzhou and introduce the sport. They visited high schools, universities and recreation centers. But, as Huston observed, the games were never really the point.

"The real purpose of any sister city exchange is to foster peace and understanding between two cultures, and what both sides came away with was just this overwhelming sense of kindness and love, changing attitudes, literally one person at a time," she said.

Pickleball diplomacy

Much like how Ping-Pong Diplomacy helped reopen China-US ties in the 1970s, Sullivan is betting on pickleball as a universal language connecting young people across cultures.

His philosophy of the initiative is that international relations are built "one relationship, one rally at a time".

The initiative began in April 2025, when more than 30 Montgomery County student-athletes flew to Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai for 12 days of shared play, school visits and cultural exchanges. Shenzhen returned the visit that August.

In February, a Shanghai delegation arrived in Maryland, followed by a group of students from Montgomery County Public Schools traveling to China in return, visiting Shenzhen, Shangyou, Hebi and Beijing.

These cities have either established sister-city ties with US counterparts or actively participated in people-to-people exchange initiatives, particularly youth and sports diplomacy.

"What was so amazing about this trip was that it occurred during Spring Festival," said Sullivan, adding that the students watched robots dance in Shenzhen and were "fascinated" by the trip. He also told the students what that city represents: a small fishing village transformed into a global technology hub.

"I believe in the power of sport and the power of pickleball to bring people together," Sullivan said. "I hope to continue to return to China to see different cities, both the big ones and the small villages as well. It really all speaks to the culture of China, and I think it gives us a different perspective."

The program is already drawing interest from Chinese cities. At a recent China-US Sister Cities Summit in San Francisco, representatives from Guilin and Xi'an extended invitations to explore pickleball exchanges of their own.

Beyond pickleball, Chinese-language learning is also turning cultural exchanges into personal connections.

A new perspective

Ellie Phelps had studied Chinese since she was six years old. The language felt abstract and disconnected, with no real friendships, no personal stakes, no compelling reason to continue. Her mother persuaded her to join a summer program run by the Helen Foster Snow Foundation. Today she is at Tianjin University on a Fulbright Scholarship and has a Chinese boyfriend.

"She talks about how transformative this experience has been for her life," said Eric Chipman, executive director at the Helen Foster Snow Foundation in Utah.

The foundation supports 12,000 Utah public school students who learn Chinese for half of the school day. This year, about 300 US students from kindergarten through university level will travel to the cities of Shenzhen and Beijing as well as the provinces of Hainan, Shaanxi and Qinghai.

The foundation's mission is not only language acquisition, but also people-to-people exchanges, said Chipman. "What I believe are the heart and core of exchange trips are real relationships, real meaningful connections," he said. He is actively seeking provincial and municipal partners to scale the programs into school curricula.

In Tacoma, Lincoln High School's partnership with the Affiliated High School of Fuzhou Institute of Education has produced more than 200 student and faculty exchanges since the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding in 2008.

"We have been very proud to host students from Fuzhou at Lincoln High School every summer and introduce them to Tacoma," said Tacoma City Council Member Jamika Scott. She said her younger cousin was one of those students and the experience helped her discover a lifelong passion for the world.

"I have no doubt these invaluable firsthand experiences are life-changing. I think it's going to be particularly important to expand our exchange programs in the coming years."

A former teacher and artist, Scott envisions deepening the relationship through creative fields. "Students in Tacoma are especially engaged in the arts, including glassblowing, painting, photography, filmmaking, dance and so much more. Sharing these creative passions with their Chinese counterparts and learning more about the creative work in China will enrich the lives of our young people," she said.

"When youth share their perspectives through art, I believe they can deepen their understanding of each other and find ways to imagine a bright future working together in collaboration," she added.

The same spirit of exchange extends beyond sports and language. In medicine, one of the oldest China-US educational partnerships continues to bring students, doctors and researchers together more than a century after it began.

China's earliest partnerships with a foreign medical school began in 1905, when a Yale-trained physician from the US named Edward Hume arrived in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, and established a clinic that would grow into Xiangya Hospital.

The name Xiangya means Hunan and Yale. More than 120 years later, this heritage has turned Hunan into a long-standing hub for China-US medical education cooperation, and that relationship is still active today through student exchanges, joint training and research partnerships, said Mai Miao, vice-president of the Hunan People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

Xiangya School of Medicine, now part of Central South University, continues to collaborate with US institutions on training and research. The school's US origins make Xiangya a natural bridge between Hunan and US medical institutions. Building on that bridge, Mai said, the province aims to become a base where Chinese and US medical professionals exchange ideas and collaborate.

In April, the Changsha leg of the 2026 China-US Youth Health Dialogue convened young medical professionals from both countries at Xiangya School of Medicine. Vladimir Ljubimov, a neurosurgery faculty member at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, shared his research at the conference and later documented the experience on social media.

The photos show him posing for group photos with Chinese colleagues, visiting the thousand-year-old Yuelu Academy, a traditional pharmacy and the neurosurgery department of Xiangya School of Medicine. He called it "an unbelievable experience" and wrote in the post, "I got to see and learn so much about China's healthcare and met world-class young professionals from China and the US, making great friends along the way!"

University of Michigan Medical School student Max Wagner, one of seven students from the university who attended the China-US Youth Health Dialogue last year, encouraged his fellow students to apply.

"These experiences broaden our understanding of medicine and the diverse ways it can be delivered and perceived by patients," he said in a news release on the school's website. "We embraced so many opportunities to step outside our US-based clinical lens to see patient care from a new cultural perspective."

Move beyond abstraction

Whether through pickleball, a classroom or a medical exchange, the deeper purpose is the same: to move people beyond abstraction. For those working on China-US subnational ties, that begins with showing up.

Ker Gibbs, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, often recalls a story about Max Baucus, the US ambassador to China under then-president Barack Obama.

Early in his posting, Baucus was the guest of honor at a Chinese banquet. Everything was going smoothly until, midway through the meal, he looked next to him and found the seat beside him empty. His host had gone. Baucus' first instinct was anger. Then he looked up. The host was moving from table to table, glass raised, toasting guests, filling the room with warmth. Then came understanding. He picked up his own glass, walked to the nearest table, and did exactly the same. The room was delighted.

Gibbs shared the story with the attendees at the recent China-US Sister Cities Summit in San Francisco to make the point: you have to be there.

"If you talk to Max Baucus today, he can't wait to get up out of his chair. You invite him to dinner, he barely sits down, and he just grabs his glass and goes off and toasts people," Gibbs said.

"There is no substitute for actually being there in China, talking to people and experiencing their culture and traditions," said Gibbs.

This year marks the 42nd anniversary of Oregon's sister-state bond with Fujian province and the 12th year of its sister relationship with Tianjin municipality.

Oregon became the first state in the United States to codify a sister-state committee in law: a bipartisan, bicameral committee designed explicitly to outlast any administration or electoral cycle. When political winds shift, the relationship holds its course.

"This design is highly intentional," said Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner, who cochairs the Oregon China Sister State Committee. "It ensures that our relationship with China transcends elections and party politics."

The legal framework, he said, sends a clear message that Oregon is open for business, committed to educational and cultural exchanges, and committed to building enduring subnational bridges.

Last October and November, the committee sanctioned two trade missions to China. Wagner led a delegation that visited 13 cities in nearly three weeks.

Those missions bore what Wagner called "magnificent fruit": Oregon signed an agreement last month to export more than 80,000 additional tons of hay to China.

He acknowledged that, to economists, this amounts to a line on a balance sheet. "But to the farmers, to local communities keeping their generational lands profitable, and to the workers at our ports staying employed, it means so much more," he said. "It is these subnational relations that turn abstract diplomacy into real-world mutual prosperity."